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Prince of Wales Silvers

I am considering a trip to POW to fish for silvers. I am considering a self guided trip with maybe a day of fishing with a guide as well as a day on a charter for halibut. Any information or suggestions would be apprecited. Post or PM. Thanks

Fun trip

Went there years ago and stayed at Fireweed lodge for 7days / 7nights. Fishing is good to great. Bob was a great host. http://www.fireweedlodge.com/

You didn't say if your freshwater or saltwater fishing but they have both. Being this will be a even year for pinks, for freshwater, you'll need to get past them to get to the silvers, but several good rivers to fish and the silvers were all good size, ie. 12 +lbs.

With saltwater, you'll have fun as well, and for halibut the fishing is also good.

I've looked at going to POW in the past but have not made it yet. Does it has easy road fishing for Silvers like Kodiak?
From what I have read, sounds like the best thing to do is rent your car on the mainland and take the ferry over. On the island they have cars to rent but are expensive and not well maintained.
I have not yet been able to find out where it is best to base out of. Does anyone have any suggestions and a possible guide for the first day? Which weeks & rivers in the fall are the most productive?

research

This forum is a wealth of information and many regulars are willing to supply information. The best advice I can give you is spend a couple of hours looking through past posts for information. I actually keep a notebook and take notes. Then come on here and ask specific questions. Very general questions tend to get little response, and I can't blame them as the same questions get asked often and general questions tend to need lengthy, multiple responses. Remember we need the information that they have and the fact that they are willing to share is a true blessing. Try and do as much research as possible and make it as easy on them as possible. I say this based on my own mistakes on here. Thanks and bless you again to everyone that has helped me in the past.

Prince of Wales is big

I would have to agree with tz ... the Fireweed Lodge is a very good deluxe accommodation lodge that is located very well to travel north and south ... and Jody runs a very good packing / smoking business on the property.

Fishing is very good throughout the Island. An experienced fisher should have no problem getting on fish.

A Guide will just be able to get / show you some out of the out of way / off the beaten path places.

I have guided stream fishing since the early '80's. Many fishers have hired me for a day or two just to show them around a little and then took off on their own. Many of those stayed at the Fireweed. But there are many types and styles of lodging throughout the Island.

I guess I forgot to mention I will be stream and river fishing, Thanks

I hope this isn't too obvious, but don't even think of showing up until the second week of september for silver fishing in rivers/streams (ocean fishing is another matter). You might get into some stream/river silvers if there is a big early rain, but probably not - and if you do - they will be mixed in 1:100 pinks.

More likely, if you come do come too early (i.e., August, or even the first week of september), you will have nothing but a mess of slimy rotten pinks. Been there, done that, done it again, seen many others do it too, don't wanna do it a third time.

humpies

Steve makes a good point about timing ... but in years past when bait was leagle the first part of Sept was the most stream fished weeks for Coho. There are usually plenty of Coho in the systems in late Aug / early Sept but on most years there can be lots of Humpies in the way.

Of course there could be years like this last one where heavy Sept flooding made for allot of very hard fishing days, throughout Sept. Normally we have early Sept flooding that does cripple lots of Humpies. But in years of heavy Pink runs they are still there when the water lays back down. Sometimes even many in the way into Oct.

Now-a-days there is a bait window starting on Sept 15th and that has become the most popular time to fish the Coho. Bait makes it much easier to target the Coho. But make no mistake it can be done with lure and fly starting in late Aug.

As for timing...

A coworker and I were on POW for work in 2008. We were there Aug 27-29 and managed to catch several coho every day (early morning, late evening, around our work schedule) fishing rivers off the road system. I caught my biggest silver still to date on that trip... a big bull pushing 20lb!

It had been raining like crazy. Even the POW locals were complaining about the rain, so that's saying something. But they also told us the fishing had been even better a week previous (always the case, right??) before the rains got so heavy.

There were lots of pinks in the water. We couldn't fish some areas they were so thick, but we found plenty of good water where the predominant fish hooked were coho.

Not saying it might not be even better in September, but that year late August treated us pretty good.